scipline. The enthusiasm for Kosciuszko's
person in the camp and in the nation is beyond credence. He is a simple
man, and is one most modest in conversation, manners, dress. He unites
with the greatest resolution and enthusiasm for the undertaken cause
much sang-froid and judgment. It seems as though in all that he is doing
there is nothing temerarious except the enterprise itself. In practical
details he leaves nothing to chance: everything is thought out and
combined. His may not be a transcendental mind, or one sufficiently
elastic for politics. His native good sense is enough for him to
estimate affairs correctly and to make the best choice at the first
glance. Only love of his country animates him. No other passion has
dominion over him."[1]

[Page 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]

The name of Kosciuszko is linked, not with victory but with a defeat
more noble than material triumph. The watchword he had chosen for the
Rising, "Death or Victory," was no empty rhetoric; it was stern reality.
The spring of 1794 saw the insurrection opening in its brilliant
promise. From May the success of an enterprise that could have won
through with foreign help, and not without it, declined Kosciuszko had
now to reckon not only with Russia Prussia was about to send in her
regiments of iron against the little Polish army, of which more than
half were raw peasants bearing scythes and pikes, and which was thus
hemmed in by the armed legions of two of the most powerful states in
Europe.

On the 6th of June Kosciuszko reached Szczekociny. It was among the
marshes there that the Polish army met the fiercest shock of arms it had
yet experienced in the course of the Rising. "The enemy," wrote
Kosciuszko in his report, "stood all night under arms. We awaited the
dawn with the sweetest hope of victory." These hopes were founded on the
precedent of Raclawice and on the battles in which Kosciuszko had fought
in the United States, where he had seen British regulars routed by the
American farmers. But as hostilities were about to begin with the
morning, Wodzicki, examining the proceedings through his field-glasses,
expressed his amazement at the masses moving against the Polish army.
"Surely my eyes deceive me, for I recognize the Prussians," he said to a
Polish officer at his side. It was too true. In the night the Prussian
army had come up under Frederick William II. "We saw," says Kosciuszko
"that it was not only with the Russians we had to d